Present! è l’imperativo etico con il quale alzarsi e prendere parola di fronte alle ingiustizie.
– Diane Taylor, The politics of presence
Present! 2023 continues and expands the experience implemented by Amigdala during 2021/2022 and already supported by Fondazione di Modena through the Mi Metto all’Opera call.
Present! is a project of Public art and culture-based urban regeneration which composes in a unified framework numerous cultural projects that combine community activation, participation, urban analysis, storytelling of territories with the creation, production and hosting of national and international site-specific and community-specific (oriented to the involvement of inhabitants and communities) art experiences.
Present! chooses as its place of choice the urban peripheries where, far from the most established structures, we often witness generative and generous dynamics of meaning. Amygdala’s interest in the suburbs, in the margins, stems from the belief, held by many urban planners and city makers, that in those areas of the city it is easier to experiment, to bring out innovative instances and to conceive new ways of inhabiting the world.
Present! is spread over two neighborhoods in the city: the Craftsman Village/Madonnina, where Amigdala has long operated through the public presidium OvestLab, and the area Sacca, where Amigdala launched a cultural project in 2021 in collaboration with the PA.
Added to these two physical spaces is a third diffuse space: the urban public space, understood both as a physical place of proximity and as a new digital public space.
Present! is a project of social generativity that sets as its horizon the empowerment of individuals and groups through new capacities to act and participate, the empowerment of individuals and communities to promote a new idea of growth that puts at the center, beyond the economic side, the environmental dimensions, care for human health, responsibility for social and spatial justice, and the promotion of common goods such as education, culture and art, responding creatively, positively and productively to the needs of contemporary human beings.
Present! 2023 is a project of Amygdala Collective in parternship with CivicWise Italy supported by Fondazione di Modena as part of Mi metto all’opera, ed. 2022.
#MAKINGCOMMUNITY #MAKINGCITY #MAKINGPARITY
The three pillars ofPresent! that guide us, day after day, in the realization of timely activities, dropped on the ground, in public space, among people.
Project actions
ofPresent.
- PERIFERICO FESTIVAL, an event that, in addition to intensive programming in the form of a festival, develops throughout the calendar year with residencies, meetings, workshops, community and civic activation processes, and collaborations with schools and institutions in the city of Modena; it is a festival conceived as a unique work in dialogue with the public space and communities of the territories involved.
- FIONDA – Collective Magazine of the Artisan Village. , a place of civic imagination that stands between memory, the present and the future; it involves about 40 citizens, and access is always open.
- BALENO BOTTEGA. 2023, a permanent workshop on the relationship between the body, movement and the city dedicated to youngsters, in collaboration with MUVet (Bologna).
- HOME. Civic imagination workshop, a large-scale project that connects communities, citizens and places in the city through a digital platform and a series of actions in public space to create a choral narrative of Modena’s places.
- KIN.Building unseen kinship 2023, a large experimental workshop dedicated to the city and feminism, within which the vitality of the chorus takes shape Les Chemin des Femmes in rehearsal at OvestLab and many other punctual actions.
- OVESTLAB, a hybrid cultural center, community workshop, space that promotes processes of participation, engagement, education, creation, civic imagination and encounter.
